Today we are hiking the same trail as yesterday, ascending more than 2,000 feet with half the gear and people. This time, I do not carry the recommended wool hat or extra layers of clothing, nor do I share the burden of higher elevation oxygen with anyone else but my husband Logan, the reason we’re here again. We’re on a mission to find something we lost, and we know exactly where to look: where the white pine recedes to chalky scree, and the last of the spring snow paints patches of the slope a glistening white.
We’re hiking in Yellowstone National Park, a place so known for its geysers and caustic, alien landscape that trails like Avalanche Peak often fall under the radar of the park’s nearly one million monthly visitors. In exchange for the sweeping silence of the Grand Absoroka Mountain Range, we must contend with the steep, lung-punching grade that, after a while, makes my stomach turn and head pound.
“I don’t feel well,” I moan, nauseated, as Logan and I sit shoulder-to-shoulder on an overturned log. We’re about halfway to the top and racing against time. Grey gathers quickly and easily over Yellowstone’s highest peaks, and the bald, windswept summit is perilous when lightning splits the sky. A storm today would pose another problem: the rain could dislodge our treasured possession and render our rescue mission a failure.
After a long pull of water from my Camelbak, I rest my head on Logan’s shoulder and say, “I need love. Love will heal me.”
And he responds, “Love is what’s going to get this mouse off the mountain.”
We call them Husband and Wife Maus, two overpriced finger puppets we found in a gift shop in Wyoming. Logan smiled when I showed him the barrel of mice, then snuck two to the counter. In less than 72 hours, they’d be zipped into my Camelbak on our Avalanche Peak adventure and authoring their own Instagram posts.
The mice were newly purchased, yes, and worthless toys, yes, but they served an honorable purpose not just as whimsical travel totems but comic relief and cheap therapy during moments of contention. With mice on our fingers, we could turn even the most intense disagreements between us into something calm, rational, and caring; they facilitated both an unveiling of the inner child — a world of play where imagination infiltrates and relieves reality — and an empathetic recognition of the argument’s emotional core. We hadn’t had the mice long, but they’d already helped soothe the tensions that arose from cross-country travel, and I had a feeling I’d need them again.
Avalanche Peak measures 10,568 feet above sea level, almost double the elevation of Denver. The trailhead is located near Eleanor Lake, about 10 minutes from Yellowstone’s less popular East entrance. The East gate is closed during winter because to get there, you have to endure one hour of the stunning albeit nauseating Yellowstone Highway (US-14W/US-16W/Us-20W) that snakes through canyons from the cowboy town of Cody, Wyoming.
A massive, four-pod wind-wrapped tent is our home for five days in Cody, where we’re staying at a KOA and consuming scrumptious campfire meals cooked by Logan’s buddy Josh’s mom. She and her friend explore the Yellowstone geysers as Josh, Mike, Logan and I use the REI National Parks app to find Avalanche Peak, the No. 1 rated Featured Hike, a 4.6 mile out-and-back black-diamond trail.
It’s our first hike of the trip, and Mike is gasping for air only a few minutes in.
I am, too.
The struggle is so real that Mike asks not to be video recorded as we go up. Our normal, teasing banter (I jest about Trump, he threatens to cut down a tree in my honor) has no place here, so I walk not beside him, but up ahead, the two mice poking out from my Camelbak to keep four eyes on him. Logan walks ahead of me, and Josh leads the way, more so bounding than pressing to the bald. Every so often, we gather together again to drink and rest. The silence in the woods is sweeping and consuming, a snow-blanket quiet that reminds me how much chatter I hear at home.
When the Shoshone Forest gives way briefly to an open slope, Mike splays on the ground in a position not too dissimilar from a beached whale. Except here, he bathes in the sweat from his skin, not the salt of the sea.
“Don’t wait on me,” Mike says, shifting weight from one trekking pole to the next and wiping his brow. We’ve been hiking for more than two hours and finally arrived at the exposed part of the trail, talus slopes home to the American Pika, one of the mountain’s cutest creatures and an animal I’ve wanted to see since doing a presentation on the pika in AP Environmental Science class.
The pika, a squeaky little relative of the bunny that looks like a cuddly half-mouse, has long been of concern to scientists because of fears that global warming will shrink the pika’s habitat of snow-packed talus slopes. The 2016 election of President Trump is likely to only weaken the pika’s chance of gaining protection under The Endangered Species Act of 1973, given the current administration’s flagrant and persistent disregard of both the tangible and intangible values of healthy, sustainable ecosystems. Environmental policies do, after all, often conflict with the best interests of mega corporations, and in the last year alone, at least 25 species awaiting protection were denied.
In about twenty more minutes, I’ll look to my left and see a pika stand upright, open its mouth, squeak loudly, and disappear as quickly as it came.
As we approach the summit, we pause frequently to marvel at a view that only gets better with elevation. The summit provides gorgeous views of Yellowstone Lake, faraway, shadowed peaks and even the prominent outline of the Grand Tetons three hours South. The panorama is the most stunning outlook I’ve ever seen, topping even the most picturesque blue mountain lakes of Maine.
And it only gets better.
Shortly after Logan and I FaceTime my mom to share a 360, Logan says, “Missy, you have to come here, you won’t believe this.”
There in the distance is a miniature garden without the weeds or flowers, just a popsicle stick fence, puppet mouse-sized wheelbarrow and bench, and an arch. As the boys unwrap Clif bars behind the summit’s only rock shelter, I bare the cold wind and strategically place the mice in the garden, a happy anomaly among the things humans leave behind.
We spend nearly an hour on the summit, absorbing the views.
But the forecast predicts rain, and so do the clouds, so we gather our belongings and begin our descent. I fall toward the back, just in front of Mike, and watch as Logan and Josh discuss something in the distance. As Mike and I approach, Logan says, “Hey guys, wanna slide down a mountain?” I hardly have time to object; Josh and Logan are already forging the path, just adjacent to the trail, that provides a more direct path down. It’s steep, so steep that Mike insists on getting ahead of me so he doesn’t take me down the mountain with him in case of a fall. Every few steps, he turns around and makes sure I’m okay, in a big-brother way that renders our conflicting political opinions moot.
The shortcut is short but, overall, a bad idea. If it rains, we’ll slip, and if we don’t, we’re still disturbing the off-trail ecosystem and unknowingly disobeying official park rules.
Karma won’t forget: not long after the descent, I realize I’m missing one of the puppet mice from the back pocket of my Camelbak, and it’s not the one with the yellow ribbon.
It’s Husband Maus. He’s gone.
That night, I listen to the rain slam the canvas of our tent, the thunder resonate in the Wyoming hills, and I think about the mouse, alone on Avalanche Peak, surrounded by a glitter dome sky.
When we pass the Avalanche Peak trailhead the next day, Mike asks us if we want to go search for the mouse. Logan looks at me eagerly with the boyish excitement I adore. I’m not prepared to hike the mountain again, let alone with only Chacos and not hiking boots, but the spontaneity gives me a burst of energy and a mouse-hunt feels so ridiculous I’m instantly on board.
Despite my enthusiasm, I’m slower than sludge today, gasping for air almost immediately. But the familiarity of the trail feels encouraging, and I anticipate so difficult a climb that I’m shocked when we arrive at the clearing in the woods that opens to the talus slopes.
The search begins here.
We work backward up the shortcut, scanning pockets between rocks. Any signs of us being there yesterday are nowhere to be found today. We’re careful and slow, treading as lightly as we can to disturb as little as possible.
But to no avail. The rain clouds gather. Logan asks, “Anything?”
No.
We reach the top of the shortcut, the open field where we saw a deer graze the day before.
And that’s when I spot him—a brown mouse with a light belly almost the color of stone.
I document the scene, zip up the mice in my backpack so not even their whiskers feel the wind, and we barrel down the mountain.
We emerge from the trailhead just as it begins to storm. Logan and I find shelter under a canopy of trees adjacent to Sylvan Lake.
A family from Wisconsin invites us to eat burgers from their pre-hike picnic, and a young couple that just spent six weeks fishing in Alaska offers us slices of crisp bacon. The girlfriend's green hair contrasts her pale, blemished face, and she smiles when Logan reveals the reason we hiked the mountain two days in a row. I wonder if she's curious about us and the mice, like I am about her green hair and her boyfriend and their travel van and their Alaskan adventure and their futures, together or apart. If I asked her all of this, what would she be willing to divulge to a ten-minute stranger? And what would I? That this week in Yellowstone is the most awake I've felt all year, despite waking up at dawn? That this trip is the reason Logan and I now share a love of hiking, and before it, my own experiences and words failed to convince? I don't say anything, of course, just look down at my dusty Chacos, admiring their durability, the rescue. For the rest of the day, I swing my bag around over and over, checking for passengers.